Thursday, February 03, 2005

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan

I probably wouldn't have my own little blog if not for Andrew. His was the first blog that I discovered, and it was consistently one of the best largely due to Andrew's rather unique perspective on the world.

I first encountered Andrew's blog, believe it or not, thanks to Gregg Easterbrook and his Tuesday Morning Quarterback column, then on ESPN.com (now on NFL.com). Gregg, in addition to writing about football, also writes about politics for the Atlantic Monthly and The New Republic. Because of Gregg I made a habit of visiting TNR.com on a daily basis and soon encountered Andrew Sullivan, who used to be the editor of TNR and is still a frequent contributor. I enjoyed almost everything he wrote, but I always thought, "if only he would write a little more frequently."

At about the same time I was developing into my news-junkie habit by reading CNN.com and Foxnews.com everyday and trying to pick out all of the differences in their coverage. On Foxnews.com they occasionally link to a blog called TongueTied, which purports to point out instances of political correctness run amok. It is occasionally interesting, although I sometimes think that they stretch for material. However, if you scroll down the Blogroll at TongueTied (which used to be considerably shorter), you'll notice the name of Andrew Sullivan. "Just Andrew Sullivan?" I thought. So I clicked and I was quickly reading my first blog (Note: Yes, TongueTied is a blog too, but at the time it seemed like some weird little feature of FoxNews, so I don't count it).

It's oddly appropriate that the liberal TNR and the conservative Tonguetied/FoxNews conspired to lead me there. Andrew led to Instapundit, and Virginia Postrel (who has been kind enough to link ustwice), and Dan Drezner (who guestblogged for Andrew about a year and a half ago, and was kind enough to link us once). And the rest followed.

Andrew is going on what is hopefully a temporary hiatus to write a book and take care of some other things. I can certainly understand that , as the volume of information that he generates is staggering. I wish him well and hope to see him back in the not to distant future, and I give my sincere thanks.